


Suddenly, You

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 14:16:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10538214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: Tatsuya feels his insides do some kind of twist. He wants to see Shuu, suddenly, badly, more than he’s been wanting to all day.





	

**Author's Note:**

> 4/4 nijihimu....but this ended up being more tatsuya-centric in general bc i uh. tend do do that. 
> 
> i love canonverse nijihimu a lot tho.....

Tatsuya wakes up several times on the flight. Each time he looks around; the cabin’s still dark and he feels how high up they are and shifts his position, trying not to think about how stiff he is, and goes back to sleep. The last time, what wakes him up is the voice on the intercom announcing they’re beginning the descent into Los Angeles. If Tatsuya had a window seat, his face would be so close to the panes, but the sleeping middle-aged businesswoman next to him is slumped with her head against the shade. It’ll be less than an hour before he’s on the ground, before he can see the whole damn thing for himself, and on top of how long he’s been away (longer if he doesn’t count the few short trips he’s made back) an hour should be nothing.

It doesn’t feel like nothing when he’s suddenly wide awake and in a state of time disorientation; the people around him are opening their windows and sunlight’s streaming in. They’d left Japan in the evening; this is technically earlier in the same day and it would be too much to think about but the plane seems like it’s just hovering in the air, that they’re not really closing in.

He’s about to be back; he’s about to be home for good. It’s a good feeling, but a little bit strange, something he’d been imagining ever since he’d left in one way or another but something that, now that it’s real, it’s hard to comprehend. He’d just parted ways with Liu at the airport; it seems a little too neat that that part of his life is, all of a sudden, a closed door. He’s ready to move on and it’s not bad, just…something. Tatsuya flexes his hand. He’s home. He’s fucking home, or close to it.

Time drags even more, until finally they’re on the ground and at the gate and all the pushy people in front of him have slowly oozed off the plane finally he’s out! The sun is streaming through the terminal windows and people are yelling and tripping over each other and looking absolutely lost but Tatsuya knows where he’s going. He checks the baggage claim announcements (nothing yet) and heads over to Cinnabon for an absolutely disgusting pastry. His phone vibrates while he’s on the escalator, and he swipes the passcode with an icing-covered finger.

_Did you land yet?_

It’s from Shuu, and Tatsuya lets himself smile.

_Yes. Just getting my luggage._

_I’m glad. Can’t wait to see you._

Tatsuya feels his insides do some kind of twist. He wants to see Shuu, suddenly, badly, more than he’s been wanting to all day (knowing he’s just on the other side of a plane ride across the ocean), more than he always wants to. He almost misses the bottom of the escalator with his preoccupation and stumbles, swearing loudly enough to make a nearby parent frown and cover his oblivious child’s ears.

At least he hadn’t landed at rush hour, so the taxi into the city isn’t going at a glacial pace (though there’s nothing that screams LA quite like being stuck in traffic and surrounded by walled-off road rage). There’s still enough time to see it around him, familiar buildings and storefronts and streets, empty lots built up into garages or condominiums or offices, the same shitty intersections filled with oblivious tourists holding up selfie sticks and walking into traffic.

When he’s finally back at his house, Tatsuya dumps his crap in his room and takes the stairs two at a time to the basement. He’d left a basketball (in good enough shape) and his spare sneakers here last time; he jams on the shoes and leaves the formal school shoes down here instead. He’s already feeling more at ease as he rolls the ball around his wrist, spins it on a finger.

It’s a short walk to the court by his house, and aside from being warmer the four months since he’s last been here seem not to have happened at all. This time there’s no need to get used to it; it’s already around him and in him, everything he’s been thinking about getting back to since he’d landed back in Japan. There’s no one on the court, but that’s okay; it’s nice to be able to hear the sound of his worn-in soles slapping the asphalt, his layups clank against the rim and thud on the backboard, the sharp clap of his palms against the ball, the ball against the ground. He dribbles past imaginary defenders, drains threes and imagines a screaming crowd, tries a couple of half-court shots (they, of course, land nowhere close to where he wants them to). He tries from closer-up, more seriously, several feet beyond the arc; that works better, more often than not the balls rolling around and through the hoop. He steps back a little farther and shoots again; the ball clanks off the rim and ricochets to the side; Tatsuya turns his head to follow it but someone else gets to the ball before him.

“Shuu?”

It comes out more of a question than anything; he hadn’t been expecting him, not here and not so soon (then again his biological clock’s fucked and it’s probably three or four by now).

“Hey, Tatsuya.”

Tatsuya steps toward him and Shuu drops the ball; they meet each other in the middle and Shuu grabs him into a tight embrace. Shuu’s heartbeat is pounding heard enough for Tatsuya to feel it in his own chest; he hugs Shuu tighter and he has to stand on his tiptoes (damn it) to fit his face into the crook of Shuu’s neck and nose aside the collar of his school blazer.

“Welcome back,” Shuu murmurs. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” says Tatsuya, and it comes out easier than he’d been expecting.

Eventually they break contact, Shuu squeezing Tatsuya’s hands and looking into his eye. Tatsuya smiles back at him, and pulls Shuu into a very short kiss.

“One-on-one?”

Shuu looks at him (Tatsuya knows he doesn’t really have to ask but he likes to all the same).

It’s clear from the get-go that Shuu’s been working on his long-range shots; Tatsuya defends aggressively and pushes him back but forcing Shuu to shoot from there isn’t as bad of an outcome as it had been even a few months ago.

“You’ve been practicing,” Tatsuya says after Shuu makes a sharp-angle jumper he hadn’t been able to get high enough to block.

“So have you,” says Shuu, and, well, they are tied at the moment.

But that really means it’s time for Tatsuya to kick it up a notch and go around Shuu with a crossover into a layup before Shuu has time to right his balance. Shuu counters with a drive that almost goes past Tatsuya, but Tatsuya stays with him and anticipates just the right way to make Shuu fumble so he steals the ball back. Shuu blocks his next shot, but the ball lands on Tatsuya’s other side and he gets there first. Shuu’s trying to fake him out, get him to commit, so Tatsuya does just that, and, well, it’s not exactly what Shuu’s expecting. He corrects himself and jumps, but Tatsuya’s already shooting, just high enough to clear the tops of Shuu’s fingertips and drop through the hoop (if there was a net there it would make that particular kind of noise right now).

They play for a while longer, until they’re both a little winded and there are some neighborhood kids trying to get a five-on-five in. They rush to their own sides, taking no notice of Tatsuya and Shuu once they’re out of the way. Tatsuya leans back against the fence and looks up at the bright blue sky; even without the sun directly overhead he can feel the warmth against his skin and it’s hard to believe there had still been snow clinging to the ground in Akita that morning. Shuu leans back next to him, adding his fingers to where Tatsuya’s are already tangled in the links of the fence.

“What are you thinking about?” says Shuu.

“It’s good to be back,” says Tatsuya.

“Yeah,” says Shuu.

They walk the short distance to the other courts hand in hand, the basketball tucked under Tatsuya’s arm and Shuu occasionally bumping their joined hands into Tatsuya’s thigh. They don’t have to say much, and this is what Tatsuya’s missed the most about being with Shuu, the way they can so easily just be, so quietly. Even at the outset they hadn’t been posturing or talking just to talk, when there had been nothing to say; even after not seeing each other for months Tatsuya’s lingering doubts are pushed back like a wave thwarted by high dunes.

They stop at the last intersection and wait for the cars to stop coming. Tatsuya looks up into Shuu’s face, the grin that’s barely come off (he hasn’t said how happy he is to have Tatsuya back but it’s obvious, so much that a couple of years ago the force of those feelings would shoved Tatsuya back and hurt him like a sucker-punch to the gut).

“Shuu?” Tatsuya says.

“Hmm?” says Shuu.

“Thanks for sticking with me.”

“As if I wouldn’t have,” Shuu says.

His voice is soft; he knows the way Tatsuya means it. The light turns yellow; they’ve missed their chance—but that means there’s enough time for Tatsuya to lean into Shuu properly and for Shuu to accept the weight of him, only pushing him off when the light finally goes their way again (with enough time for them to dash across the street before it turns once more).

**Author's Note:**

> and then they played 2-on-2 vs alex & taiga but i couldn't fit that in without being awkward lmao


End file.
